Quote from: CantFixStupid on January 09, 2022, 10:03

Quote from: Level6 on January 09, 2022, 01:16

Quote from: Dumc on January 08, 2022, 11:26

Quote from: Level6 on January 08, 2022, 10:39

Quote from: DavidK on January 08, 2022, 08:45

Honestly, when were "the arts" ever really a viable career path?

Great point although before April 1 2019 happened I was making $140k to $160k/year when you added up my P5, SS, and videoblocks revenue, and I've read that others did much better in stock before the agencies cut pay and started doing direct deals with distributors and buyers leaving us with a few one-off sales.

Today though I would 1000% not recommend it, I think it's borderline fraud that the colleges and universities here still sell those programs as viable career opportunities, we have 16-17 year old high school students going to these career fairs and being told this is a great career opportunity.

Music was a career for some but now unless your big enough to tour you're paying to come to work with that you can make off Spotify, it's worse than stock video.

There's no money in it today, anything arts related but maybe it could be a side gig that pays once in awhile but not a job.

There's no money in free.

I just regret so much not getting out when April 1 2019 happened, could have got out debt free too.

First I have serious doubts that you can go from 160k per year to 0 per month overnight. Secondly, where did you spend all the money? Because those are big amounts. You certainly knew, that wont last forever, don't you have any savings?

Videoblocks closed to individual contributors, sales crashed at my #1 which was pond and SS was never that strong, I kept operating full tilt, upgraded equipment and put in a ton of hours, 18 hour days on the road filming and the upload/tag/repeat.

I didn't see April 1 2019 coming, sure nothing lasts forever but I didn't see warning signs until around March 15th when other contributors started saying sales stopped and the it hit me on April 1, keep in mind taxes, expenses and next thing you know I am pulling out the credit cards, I stayed in way to long thinking I could pull off a recovery and now it's not gonna recover, the market has changed too much, barely a hobby that pays now.

It sure was good while it lasted, was looking at the old tax returns for the paperwork I have to prepare and if definitely was good back then.

Sounds like poor cash flow management and no understanding of how to run a business.

Also, blaming immigrants is lame. How is it they come to a new country with zero references and experience and succeed, yet the workaholic 'Canadian' can't find a job? Seriously, if you can't find a job then you are not applying yourself.

You actually come across as self entitled and a victim in all of your rants.

I'll give you that, I should have closed the business and walked away two months after the massive sales drop at pond on April 1 2019 but you always think it's gonna come back, maybe just a "summer slump" as they used to call it.

Not blaming the immigrants from India, they are here legally, but come visit sometime and see who is working and who is in the homeless shelters, once the Indian mangers are in all the black, Asian and white are gone and it's all Indian and I'm not looking for anything high end, Walmart, fast food, light industry, whatever.

I wish you could actually come here and see and then try and get a job here, just some entry level or general labour stuff, you'd be a shocked as I was, a friend of mine who is a black student here is also running into the same problem I am.

I'm actually glad that the story mentioned the elephant in the room, no one hires native Canadians anymore, I'm surprised they mentioned it.

You should visit southern Ontario and see for yourself.

Quote from: Level6 on January 08, 2022, 10:39

Quote from: DavidK on January 08, 2022, 08:45

Honestly, when were "the arts" ever really a viable career path?

Great point although before April 1 2019 happened I was making $140k to $160k/year when you added up my P5, SS, and videoblocks revenue, and I've read that others did much better in stock before the agencies cut pay and started doing direct deals with distributors and buyers leaving us with a few one-off sales.

Today though I would 1000% not recommend it, I think it's borderline fraud that the colleges and universities here still sell those programs as viable career opportunities, we have 16-17 year old high school students going to these career fairs and being told this is a great career opportunity.

Music was a career for some but now unless your big enough to tour you're paying to come to work with that you can make off Spotify, it's worse than stock video.

There's no money in it today, anything arts related but maybe it could be a side gig that pays once in awhile but not a job.

There's no money in free.

I just regret so much not getting out when April 1 2019 happened, could have got out debt free too.

First I have serious doubts that you can go from 160k per year to 0 per month overnight. Secondly, where did you spend all the money? Because those are big amounts. You certainly knew, that wont last forever, don't you have any savings?

How and when to use ND filters for your drone in three areas: photography, time-lapses or hyper lapses, and video.
The aim is to see if and why you should buy them and what kind of ND filters you should get according to different situations
https://youtu.be/CoAD8BSF6fQ

@MatHayward to be clear, you're saying the only option is to select images and delete one by one? So if I need to delete 5,000 images, I have to do so 1 by 1? Is this what you offer to larger partner agencies too?

Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk

It depends on the customer and of course what he is looking for. If you need to download a clock timelapse rest assured that no client is to look anywhere else if he/she has a subscription at Getty SS Envato Elements p5 or Artgrid, he will surely find plenty of alternatives. But things are quite different if they search for workers in a nuclear plant, diving in a pool or drone shots of rock climbers. He will pay who ever has the video he likes best for the ProJet . It doesn't matter if he is subscribed with any other library.

Myself I was preparing not so long ago my first short film. I needed Latin chants. I was subscribed to 2 audio libraries.: soundstripe and audiio.com. I didn't like or find anything in them so I bought individual music files at Pond5. So unless you do ultra generic stuff in video people will hunt for your files if what you have is different of what other copycat and redo a 1000 times.

Remember that about hose 22 million files at SS most of it is content repeated to death : splashes, clocks, skies, etc. There is a reason that agencies like Artgrid for example are growing even if they arrived very late to the party. The same can be said of agencies like Stocksy or Arcangel in the photo department. They have nothing to fear from SS and the likes. They have different content and SS will not replicate it because 1- It is too expensive to do for the paltry returns (you just need higher payments to be viable). 2- That huge number of files just demonstrates that 99% is of very low quality and searching is a frustrating experience for many clients where time is money.

Again I am almost directing my advice to pros although we are a vanishing breed in stock. For amateurs that produce very simple stuff what you say holds true and a model smiling to a camera with a mask, the fake Covid vaccines,.... it really doesn't matter that content is everywhere. Amateurs what they have to compete is the growing free libraries that slowly have this same simple content and give it away for free.

Quote from: Firn on October 03, 2021, 03:02

This is a thought process I can't follow.

Most sales nowadays happen with subscription plans, so why would a customer who has a subscription with one agency even go searching for a video on another agency? I can understand maybe browsing around on sites with free videos or photos first and I can also understand searching somewhere else if you really need a very very specific video of something and can't find it or anything similar to it anywhere else. But if you have to buy the video from another agency where you don't have a subscription, it will cost you an extraordinary higher amount, while on the agency where you have the subscription it would cause no additional costs at all. And with 22 million videos available on Shutterstock, what are the chances that, even if you can't find one specific video there, you will not at least find some suitable substitute for it?

Quote from: For Real on August 13, 2021, 10:30

Quote from: Zero Talent on August 13, 2021, 10:12

Quote from: For Real on August 13, 2021, 08:55

without factual data there is no proof.

That's if you only want to rely on empirical data, without trying to understand the medium/long-term logical consequences of these actions. We can safely predict that the night follows day, without having to wait for the dark. 

Such a large collection of good quality free assets is rather likely to deter buyers from buying more stuff, instead of stimulating them to buy more.
That's because nothing beats free, especially when the quality is sufficient for the purpose.

So when your work is offered for free, even if you got your precious $5, you will kill potential sales not necessarily from you, but rather from your fellow contributors who are competing in the same category.
In return, their free stuff will kill your sales in other categories, very likely beyond your precious $5.

The bigger this collection becomes, the bigger the losses will be for the contributor's community.

Too bad that many of us are wearing horse blinders, seeing only their narrow and individual short-term interest, instead of seeing how fast we are cutting the branch we all are sitting on!

okay, say you're right. Wouldn't this kill Adobe as well? For Adobe to do the second wave they must have seen their sales (not free) go up as well right?

Adobe is gambling with our (future) money. It's rather likely that they will also be losing money, indeed.
Rest assured that other sites will have no option left but to compete against Adobe, offering even more stuff for free, thus hurting Adobe, the same way we are hurting each other at the contributor's level (instead of competing fairly)

The vicious circle will continue, now that Pandora's box is open.